It wasn't bad--mainly a sensation as if the ship were trying
continuously to turn over on its axis around her and not quite making
it--and she knew from previous experience that after the first hour or
so she would be completely free of that. She walked into a low, dimly
lit, very swank-looking gambling room, still well patronized by the
hardier section of her fellow travelers, searching for a place where she
could sit down unobtrusively for a while and let the subspace reaction
work itself out.
A couch beside a closed door near the unlit end of the room seemed about
right for the purpose.
Trigger sat down and glanced around. There were a variety of games in
progress, all unfamiliar to her. The players were mostly men, but a
remarkable number of beautiful women, beautifully gowned, stood around
the tables as observers. Traveler's Companions, Trigger realized
suddenly--the Dawn City's employees naturally would be inured to
subspace effects. From the scraps of talk she could pick up, the stakes
seemed uniformly high.
A swirl of vertigo suddenly built up in her again. This one was stronger
than most; for a moment she couldn't be sure whether she was going to be
sick or not. She stood up, stepped over to the door a few feet away,
pulled it open and went through, drawing it shut behind her.
There had been a shielding black-light screen in the doorway. On the
other side was bottled sunshine.
She found herself on a long balcony which overlooked a formal garden
enclosure thirty feet below. There was no one else in sight. She leaned
back against the wall beside the door, closed her eyes and breathed
slowly and deeply for some seconds. The sickish sensation began to
fade.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw the little yellow man.
He stood motionless at the far end of the garden, next to some flowering
shrubbery out of which he might have just stepped. He seemed to be
peering along the sand path which curved in toward the balcony and
vanished beneath it, below the point where Trigger stood.
It was sheer fright which immobilized her at first. Because there was
not anything really human about that small, squat, manshaped figure. A
dwarfish yellow demon he seemed, evil and menacing. The garden, she
realized suddenly, might be an illusion scene. Or else--
The thing moved in that instant. It became a blur of motion along the
curving path and disappeared under the balcony. After a second or so she
heard the sound of a door closing some distance away. The garden lay
still again.
Trigger stayed where she was, her knees shaking a little. The fright
appeared to have driven every trace of nausea out of her, and gradually
her heartbeat began to return to normal. She took three cautious steps
forward to the balcony railing, where the tip of a swaying green tree
branch was in reach.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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